If you think scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it safely is a techno-futurist pipe dream, Microsoft and the Royal Bank of Canada would like a word.
Those two financial behemoths announced they'll be buying carbon storage credits from innovative atmospheric carbon capture venture Deep Sky. Deep Sky has also received a $40 million grant from Microsoft founder Bill Gates' climate solutions venture firm, Breakthrough Energy Catalyst.
According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, we can't achieve climate goals that mitigate the worst of potential outcomes from a warming planet if we don't start pulling out billions of tons of carbon dioxide that's already been belched into the atmosphere.
But sucking carbon from the air efficiently enough to make it a carbon-negative operation is not easy. Only a handful of firms are even trying to figure out ways to make direct air capture economically viable — as opposed to the carbon capture and storage that has become a common way to reduce emissions from a power plant, for example. That needs to change if we're to make a dent in the carbon pollution we've already produced.
BloombergNEF, in its New Energy report for 2024, suggested (as cited by the World Economic Forum): "an additional 1.5-15.5 gigatonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) [or about 1.65 to 17 gigatons] removal capacity could be deployed from 2030-2050 to avoid global warming above 1.5°C."
Deep Sky's carbon storage plan could represent a step in that direction.
Its project is unique in that Deep Sky isn't trying to invent a single better way to scrub carbon from the skies. Rather, the company is employing multiple different carbon sucking technologies in one operation. Deep Sky is simply using the best tech available to help make reaching habitable climate goals an economically viable proposition.
"We need to prove that this stuff works," Deep Sky CEO Damien Steel said, per Bloomberg News via the Financial Post.
Many environmentalists criticize carbon capture efforts — especially carbon capture and storage at the point of emissions — since it can be seen as a company giving itself a greenwashing-esque license to pollute and then point to the amount of pollution it reduced. Others say doing it is better than nothing, but a direct air capture operation that seeks to pull greenhouse gases away from the atmosphere, thereby weakening the greenhouse, makes sense in theory — essentially, it is machines doing the job of forests.
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Direct air capture still faces many criticisms, such as resource and energy usage, leak risks, and subsidizing other pollution. That doesn't mean a company couldn't figure out a way to make it worthwhile, which is the challenge Deep Sky is facing. It's "seen by proponents as a way to clean up historic emissions that have already escaped into the atmosphere," as the Canadian Press wrote, "meaning it could potentially help reverse the damaging impacts of climate change."
"We need to prove that we can actually build the projects we say we're going to build, and we actually have to deliver credits to the customers who have, over the last couple of years, been making commitments to future supply," Steel said. "If that supply doesn't start showing up soon, we as a market are in big trouble."
Deep Sky is building a facility in Alberta, Canada. It will be a kind of incubator for carbon-scrubbing startups. As many as eight are expected to be hosted at the facility, according to Bloomberg News.
Companies such as Microsoft, which has announced plans to be carbon-negative by 2030, are finding it difficult to reach those targets. That's especially true with the rise of AI, which is proving to consume incredible amounts of energy.
The plan is for Deep Sky to be operational and storing carbon this year.
"What we're trying to do at Deep Sky is invest and get ourselves as far along the innovation curve as possible so that when we inevitably reach a point where we don't have a choice," said Steel. "We actually have a solution that can scale."
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